Corkscrew
by Cail M
Summary: nly funerals and weddings bring together the whole Weasley family anymore. Ginny and her siblings talk and drink one sad autumn evening. Ginny is left feeling '...I am a corkscrew mind in a straight laced world.'


Corkscrew Summary: Only funerals and weddings bring together the whole Weasley family anymore. Ginny and her siblings talk and drink one sad autumn evening.  
Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K. Rowling and I lay no claim to them.  
Rating: PG, no curse-words or 'adult' situations, but a serious/angsty theme.   
  
  
  
'...I am a corkscrew mind in a straight laced world.'   
  
  
** Corkscrew **   
  
  
The sun was setting; the moon was balanced on the rim of sky that showed above the trees, ready to leap into the sky. The picnic table was covered with the ruins of a feast, empty paper plates and a dirty glass full of used utensils.   
  
It should have been a happier gathering. The family hadn't been all in one place for over a year. Molly used to despair, "Nothing but funerals and weddings gather the Weasley's together!" Molly's own children were much too young and senseless to get married; there were only the cousins to rely on to bring the family together.   
  
"I've brought this up before, haven't I?" For some reason they were all listening so Bill didn't stop to let any of them answer, not that they would know what to say yet, because the thought is only half in-toned. "What do you call a gathering of wizards?"   
  
"A murder?" George lifted his head from his arms just long enough to answer.   
  
'That's a gathering of Dark Marks.' Ginny didn't say anything out loud but picked under her fingernails.   
  
"Not a murder, not a flock, not a herd." Bill seemed to be building to a punch line.   
  
The circle of his brothers and sister shrugged, waiting for his joke.   
  
"What do you call a gathering of wizards?" His joke suddenly turned into a fret, it twanged like the sharp noise of untuned metal strings playing all the way to the fillings in teeth.   
  
"Big trouble." Fred had not spoken much before.   
  
"I like that, a big trouble of wizards." Bill relaxed.   
  
"And witches…" Ginny mumbled.   
  
"Isn't it a harridan of witches?" Charlie said, finally wriggling into his sweater and rescuing the toppled bottle of wine from beside his knee.   
  
"No, all witches /are/ harridans." George lifted his glass and Fred his hand, they gave it an invisible toast across the table.   
  
Raucous laughter.   
  
Ginny bit her tongue to keep from sticking it out, she didn't want to be a brat, but she couldn't help the little Hermione-voice that popped into her head. 'You've got to make them shut up and respect you.' It irritated her that it wasn't even her own little voice telling her things in her head. It is something Hermione has actually said to her before and nobody else could sound so serious and so ridiculous at the same time as her dear Hermione.   
  
After the laughter there was a long lull, conversation ceased and when things became very quiet, everyone could hear the sound of Charlie swallowing.   
  
"Allright, allright, that's enough! Don't hog it." George muttered, just to make a noise.   
  
"I bought it, I have every right to hog it!" Charlie should have laughed, but instead he held onto the wine, suddenly hostile.   
  
"You did not buy it, you went into the store, it's my money!" George's mouth turned into an angry arch.   
  
"But you can't have any, legally, so stop squeaking." Charlie relaxed, propping himself up on the grass with one hand, George was at a safe distance, sitting at the picnic table, and he would never have the strength to get up and wrestle the wine away.   
  
"Don't spit into the bottle, anyway, you're backwashing." Bill grumbled. "It's like drinking downstream."   
  
"Downstream from what?"   
  
Ginny stared at her brothers bartering over the bottle of cheap wine and wanted to smile, but wasn't sure it was dark enough yet to hide her amusement, she might be seen in the yellow torchlight. There was a strong citronella smell to the air and a wind that blew the first cold mist of autumn across the hills, it was a combination of these elements, and the contrast between the glowing orange circle that smelled of lemon and wax, and the dark blue night beyond, breeze turning to a wind that wailed. It seemed as though the night might suddenly change direction and become mean, the way it almost always did when her brothers gathered, now that they were half-grown. She had decided that it was all very simple, if she thought about it in images rather than relationships. Her brothers made knots and sometimes they came undone by the slightest tug and sometimes they were inscrutable but just tangled tighter and tighter, almost strangling themselves. Sometimes, after they were loose, they tried to strangle each other. Their rough relationships fascinated her. But that was the problem; she would never be one of them, because she was 'fascinated' by 'relationships'. And that was only the beginning of the differences.   
  
"Have wine. Quick, before it's gone." Charlie thrust it at Ginny to stave off further argument. He tipped the neck up to Ginny's mouth.   
  
Ginny swallowed as Charlie lifted the bottle and she almost choked and spat it out. "What's this made of, vinegar?"   
  
Percy giggled. "We should have another one." His arm dangled off of the picnic table and into the grass, he looked like a fallen ice cream cone that had melted into an uncomfortable position.   
  
"Another bottle?"   
  
"The one I bought this time, I had better taste, didn't I."   
  
"It had better taste better." Ginny squirmed between Bill and George's shoulders, reaching for the heavy bottle and opening her hand in silent demand for the corkscrew. They would have been lost without the corkscrew, but none of them had the heart to search the kitchen, it was a dead space in the house, a whirling black hole, they couldn't bear to rifle the drawers, so they just bought a new one, one corkscrew and one bottle opener, and the various bottles of alcohol, that was all they needed. Before they went into town, Ron, practically comatose on the living room sofa had said he hoped they were joking. "We need so much more than the implements." His voice had risen and then he had burrowed back into the pillow, hiding his flushed face, striped with the texture of the sofa cushion.   
  
They had returned with three bottles of wine. Ginny had no idea how much wine it took to make you drunk, but there were the three bottles and the case of Snap Ginger's Flavor Beer, which were not carbonated soda, but something stronger that she didn't like the taste of. That's what had laid Percy flat on his back. She'd never seen him so loosened. Even his tie had come undone and slipped sideways and his top button was lost in the grass.   
  
Ginny admired the twist of the corkscrew and pressed her finger against the sharp metal point. Bent metal, twisted and bent, the necessary implement. She gripped the handle and had a short duel with a fork sticking out of a drinking glass. Some things, like corkscrews, just don't work turned around, screwing widdershins wouldn't word.   
  
"Did anyone shut the door?" Charlie asked, rising from the grass to unbalance the unsteady picnic table, snuggling in beside Bill, wishing for a dragonish warmth, one that his sweater hadn't given him.   
  
"Of what?" Bill slid an arm around Charlie without being asked.   
  
"Of the…" Charlie had almost forgotten his point. "The-the, uh, garage, you left it open."   
  
"Fred, go and close it." George yawned to the side, sliding over as Bill bumped him.   
  
Dry-eyed and dry-throated, Fred left the party and they were quiet for just long enough to hear the garage door slam to the ground and what sounded like someone pummeling it a bit on the way down.   
  
"That's the spirit." Bill began to peel the label off of Percy's unfinished Ginger's but was soon distracted by the smell, and he stole a curious sip. He set the bottle down immediately, holding his breath to keep from spitting. "This stuff… Perce…"   
  
"Do you have any idea how difficult it has been to grow up with the nickname 'Purse'?" Percy spoke with a sweet, alcohol-influenced tone that rose from the other side of the picnic table where he lay flattened, taking up more than his fair share of space.   
  
"No, how hard?" Bill wished he could see Percy's face.   
  
"I don't know, no one but you all called me that. I think most people think my name is Percival."   
  
Ginny popped her lips off of the bottle. "Why do you say that?"   
  
"They think I am fancy." Percy's hand was visible for an instant, his fingers wiggled over the edge of the picnic table.   
  
Ginny turned away and shrugged at Bill, leaning into one of his shoulders and one of George's.   
  
George's stupor lifted as Fred returned, not so dry-eyed and much more red in the face.   
  
"I think I'll have some of that anyway." Fred muttered, balancing on the end of the table since Percy was in no state to move over and give him room.   
  
"Filthy stuff, rot what's left of your brain." Charlie muttered.   
  
Ginny tried to hide the nearly full wine bottle in her arms, thinking that if she cradled it like a baby they might not notice what it really was.   
  
George wasn't about to let a full bottle of wine just walk away, though. "Ginny, don't go with that." He pointed to the house and tried to look suitably woeful, "Bring me some of those crisps still on the table?"   
  
"And the broccoli casserole dishes, those might come in handy when Percy starts to get his second wind."   
  
"What, make him eat something so he doesn't get sick?" Ginny stood on tiptoe to see her prostrate, ginger-breathed brother.   
  
"Make him eat some so he /does/ get sick and gets some of the alcohol out of his system." Bill snarled.   
  
"You were going inside, weren't you?" Percy started to sit upright and, thinking better of it, slumped back against the splintery wood. "Check in on Dad."   
  
"He'll still be in that chair." Ginny sighed.   
  
"I know." Percy sighed.   
  
"Maybe he and Ron are having dinner." Fred spoke up from the precarious edge where he sat.   
  
"They're /asleep/." Charlie spat viciously.   
  
'We all deal with our grief in different ways.' Ginny thought. She carried a handful of Percy's empty bottles into the house and couldn't decide where to put them-they had all avoided the kitchen that day, leaving the hall table crammed with the piles of food that had been donated to them, though someone must have rifled through the things, because there seemed to be fewer rolls and pies than there had been earlier.   
  
She peeked into the living room, but everyone there was still asleep, though Arthur had at least had the decency to pretend to be doing something else, he had reading material spread over his knees, a month-old copy of the Cauldron Report that had been used to hide a hole in his favorite chair so that Molly wouldn't patch and ruin it with her neat stitches.   
  
Ron was still wearing his best robes, burgundy and now wrinkled and covered in fuzz, since the couch was shedding, but he had looked rather splendid in the sunshine, at the plot. Rather splendid, but older than she ever wanted a brother of hers to look.   
  
She was suddenly flooded with a feeling of gladness that none of them were married or had prospects, it could all end like this, in this house, a family again, pulled together by grief, the only time they were not warring. Though Arthur might have battled in his dreams, he made soft noises of attack into his mustache.   
  
"Arise, arise, pull out your eyes and see what you can see, when you are done pull out your tongue and see what you can say." She whispered, one hand on the arm of the sofa, the other hand cradling three empty bottles to her stomach.   
  
Ron didn't so much wake up as turn over. He tried not to sound muffled and tired by asking, "Is there anymore of that ginger beer in the hall?"   
  
"No, we drank it all. Percy has some of those filthy flavored beers though, if you want real ginger-"   
  
"No."   
  
"Alcohol…"   
  
"No."   
  
"Sorry… well, there's wine too, though the twins were drinking those-wait, not Fred, you know."   
  
"Good, we don't need another drunken broomstick incident."   
  
"Or a visit from the ministry."   
  
"Not on a day like this."   
  
"Would you like something-Tea?"   
  
Delight mixed with gratitude flashed across Ron's face, and then muted. "Chamomile, if you don't mind."   
  
"Sugar?"   
  
"No, honey. I think there's a bear full of it somewhere."   
  
"Dad must have gotten it, Mom always says-…"   
  
Ron picks it up, "It's more package than honey."   
  
"This is awful," Ginny whispered, but got no response. She put the water on in the kitchen and slumped against the sink, staring down at the scratched basin where she could see her pink, faceless reflection.   
  
Ron watched from the doorway, unwilling to enter the kitchen all of the way. The kitchen table was crammed with casserole dishes and little cauldrons of stew that well-meaning neighbors and friends of the family had dropped by with and that no one had organized or started eating on, they preferred the alcohol and the crisps, of which they had demolished steadily and surely.   
  
'Dad must have moved them while we were at the store.' Ginny felt an unaccountable pang of guilt as if, by being the only girl in the family, she should have been there to accept the gifts and sort them into piles of the edible, the freezable and that which might be left to mold without feeling too guilty.   
  
Ron watched Ginny gathering the honey bear, the mugs and a two teabags, but everything that she did seemed to be a shadowy imitation of the real thing.   
  
"We got an owl."   
  
"Who from?"   
  
"It was caught up in the middle of a stack of condolence cards, I don't think anybody read it, they would have told me."   
  
"Who was it from?" Ron seemed to hear the question for the first time.   
  
"Harry. And Hermione."   
  
"What did they say?" Ginny was so eager that as her hand clutched around the neck of the teaspoon it bent in her fingers.   
  
"Be careful," Ron lunged for her and took away the spoon. "You're leaking magic all over the place, have some self-restraint."   
  
Ginny turned away and clattered with the mugs.   
  
"I'm sorry." She was ashamed, her lack of control had gotten her in trouble before, it had cost her three jobs and a boyfriend.   
  
"They're on honeymoon."   
  
Ginny took a deep breath, though breathing was suddenly hard. "You're kidding." She said darkly. She meant, 'You had better be kidding.'   
  
"I'm just the messenger." Ron twisted the cap off of the little bear and spread honey on his fingers like on toast. "They got married and now they are in Bavaria, in the black forest sharing a Cherry Suite."   
  
"A cherry sweet." In some ways it was better that everything bad happened it once, Ginny felt that she had no excuse to be happy ever again.   
  
"If they're away," Ginny cleared her throat and felt like spitting the evil taste out of her mouth before it choked her. "If they didn't get our owl…"   
  
"They didn't know about the funeral."   
  
"Oh, well… at least they're happy."   
  
"Yes."   
  
"They're right for each other."   
  
"No they're not."   
  
"I know. I know, but it's easier to be wrong. It's easier to be wrong than to be devastated!"   
  
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you still had that thing for him…"   
  
Ginny gave Ron his tea, frowning. She would not invite him out to the picnic table; she would not pretend she wanted his company and lean on him for support and counsel, he was too idiotic to be believed.   
  
She wanted to shout and rail but instead she took her tea and went back outside, mixing tea and Snap Ginger's until she could confess, to Charlie at least, that the only girl she ever loved had run off with the boy who lived.   
  
  
  



End file.
